President George W. Bush's successor should renounce his monarchy-By Bruce Fein

[kpete]

FIXING IT:
Repairing some of the worst Bush administration screw-ups.
The Presidency

End the war on terror as a legal paradigm; abolish military commissions, and restore FISA.
By Bruce Fein

Posted Wednesday, April 2, 2008, at 7:11 AM ET

With President Bush's approval rating hovering in the 30s, just about everyone has an opinion on what George W. has done wrong in the past seven years. But not everyone can explain what the next president must do to fix it. So we've called in some experts to tell us. Fixing It is a 10-part series to be published over the course of the week by some of our favorite writers, offering detailed policy prescriptions for the next president, whoever that may be, on how to quickly undo some of the damage that's been wrought. One of our contributors wryly describes the series as "News You Can Use. If You Happen To Be President." Read the other entries here.http://www.slate.com/id/2187229/landing/1/

President George W. Bush's successor should renounce his monarchy. It betters the instruction of King George III, which provoked the Declaration of Independence. Among other things, the 44th president of the United States should do the following promptly upon taking office: Transfer the impending trials of six "high-value" al-Qaida detainees before Spanish Inquisition-like military commissions to civilian courts; repudiate President Bush's kidnappings, secret imprisonments, and maltreatments of suspected al-Qaida supporters abroad on his say-so alone—a page from Hobbes' state of nature; denounce signing statements that declare the president's intent to disregard provisions of bills he has signed into law because he disputes their constitutionality; and end the snobbish custom of former government Brahmins preening in their honorifics after leaving office. The Founding Fathers prohibited titles of nobility to encourage a nonhierarchical culture that honors equality before the law.

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• Put an end to the imperial presidency. President Bush has usurped what Gen. Washington and the Founding Fathers reprehended: unchecked power that sacrifices fundamental liberties to trust in the president. To paraphrase Lord Acton, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Just ask President Bush's kidnap-and-torture victims, including Khaled El-Masri, Abu Omar, or Maher Arar. The Constitution's marquee is checks and balances, a system predicated upon a suspicion of human nature. James Madison sermonized in "The Federalist No. 51": "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."
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Robert Draper recounts in Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush an alarming averment by the current occupant of the White House. Without blushing, Mr. Bush insisted to his biographer: "You can't learn lessons by reading. Or at least I couldn't." Here's a to-do list for his successor:



read the to-do list at:
http://www.slate.com/id/2187811

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

1. Bruce Fein is a rockstar to me. :)